Featured article – Fastest whales and dolphins reinforce diaphragms

In a new Research Article, a team of Canadian and US scientists has discovered that whales and dolphins reinforce their diaphragms, probably to withstand pressure increases in the abdomen when they beat their tails while swimming.

Conversation – Kakani Katija

“Speaking with people at meetings is nothing like the effort you should put into nurturing your mentoring relationships”

Join our conversation with Kakani Katija, Principal Engineer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, USA, where she designs and builds instrumentation to study marine invertebrate ecomechanics. Both an engineer and a scientist, she shares the story of her unusual career path and why mentoring is vital in academia.

Catch up with the previous interviews in our new series of Conversations with early-career researchers.

Short Communication – Phenotypic plasticity of muscle fibre type in the pectoral fins of Polypterus senegalus

Trina Du and Emily Standen reveal in a Short Communication that amphibious Senegal bichir raised in terrestrial environments develop a greater proportion of fast-contracting muscle fibres in their pectoral fins than aquatically reared fish.

JEB Classics – Circadian window of opportunity: what have we learned from insects?

In her JEB Classics article published in 2010, Jadwiga Giebultowicz discusses James Truman's 1972 paper investigating the timing of larval ecdysis entitled: ‘Physiology of insect rhythms: I. Circadian organization of the endocrine events underlying the moulting cycle of larval tobacco hornworms’.

This article features in a special collection on circadian rhythm research from The Company of Biologists, in honour of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.